I bought about a year ago a French windows version of Darwinia because yes, I'm French. I got a CD-ROM which worked well. Now times have changed and I run undex Linux Ubuntu Hardy Heron.
So I followed the explanation for installing Darwinia on Linux. I got the patch and the CD. I put the CD in when I'm kindly asked to but then it keeps printing the same message : "Mount Darwinia CD. Choose Yes to start again or No to cancel." (I translated this). Clicking Yes makes this message appear again. No cancels the installation.

I searched through the forum and discovered that if the dat files were copied from the disc to the dawinia/lib directory, it should work.

I tried to copy the cab and hdr files to the darwinia/lib directory then changes the cab extension into dat. But it didn't work.

How can I proceed with the installation ?

Here are information on the disc. It seems to be distributed by SDLL (Société de distribution de logiciels de loisir) part of Micro Application. The CD name that appears once it is mounte tried to changed is 9800SD.

Thanks a lot !!!

jy

PS : I hope this has nothing to do with the fact to you, Britons, don"t like the French frogs

You can try to unpack the .cab files manually... they are a windows archive format. Search the net or your package repositories for an archiver that can handle cab files. The .dats are probably inside.

If you are very lucky, your desktop file browser (under X) will support "diving" into .cab files... try clicking on them to see.

You might try using a windows machine to unpack, then email or transfer to your linux box. Or you might install on a windows box and copy the .dat files to linux.

Next I installed Darwinia with the provided patch on the website.
But there still seems to be a problem. I'm invastigating right now and i'm currently editing this post.

I didn't know what to run to play the game so I tried
/bin/sh ~/darwinia/darwinia

but there was an error :
.
./lib/darwinia.bin.x86: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

but then i saw a couple of posts on the forum showing the use of md5sum to check wether your dat files are correct.
Here's what I got
2e508c967ccd7e0be3340ffddcf2f83d darwinia.bin.x86
961b9e62c461272fd33c535738e81664 language.dat
dcecdf7413075e38994f4e3f819dfd38 main.dat
55ff829a76127abe2af7c5f3d9a986ec open-www.sh
2ae5d27311f51502d4887b2840775c9a patch.dat
e42ce8ec84c1f0d8e76e827b978eced4 sounds.dat

I will try to install darwinia with wine again but with no DMA for the CD rom but it didn't work. Actually I couldn't even uninstall Darwinia with wine.

Actually the linux installer doesn't seem to have installed Darwinia at all. Just copied a few files and libs.

You need a combination of *both* the old .dats from the original CD *and* the new .dats *plus* the new executable from the 1.4.0b9 beta version (from sticky thread). Some of the .dats are not included in the patch releases -- those are the .dats you need from the original install -- and can come from any OS version of darwinia AFAIK.

Easiest way is to install the 1.4.0b9 on top of the old windows install files -- just move the win files to where the linux files will install... or use a copy tool that will give you the option to "update only" the files if you copy the other way: new on top of old.

BUT BIG BIG CAVEAT!... I believe I may have been the guy that started this rumour: that you *can* do this mix-n-match OS .dat files thing... but I've never actually done it myself. My original suggestion was based on my (fairly deep) understanding of all the .dat file formats -- and they are identical across all 3 platforms. Since all the patches include brand new executables, it makes sense that you should be able to mix the .dat files to get 1.4.0b9 linux running from a windows 1.3 (or earlier) license.

BUT I make no promises! ...In reality you may have to apply one or more of the windows patches in proper order IF your install CD is *really really* old, like way way before 1.3...

Good luck! But if your time is worth more than $5/hr, you've probably already spent more than the cost of a new linux licence... you might just consider supporting IV again

I installed the new executable from the 1.4.0b9 beta version (from sticky thread). But then I still got the libstdc++.so.5 error. I finally discovered that I didn't have it (only libstdc++.so.6). I installed it and the game ran with no problem !!

Thanks for your precious help !!!
Now I'm gonna be able to play the biosphere level again (which is my favorite) !!